Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be foggy in the morning with a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:12 AM and sunset 4:20 PM for 9h 08m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 99.6% of its visible disk illuminated.
The Whitewater School Board’s Policy Review Committee meets at 9 AM.
On this day in 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy carries out a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
There is a misunderstanding — perhaps willful for some — about how much damage many communities, including Midwestern communities, have experienced over the last twenty years. Some communities never truly bounced back from the Great Recession, only thereafter to be hit with the effects of a nationwide pandemic. In a community like Whitewater, if an assessment does not begin with how policymakers failed to respond to the Great Recession, it’s a thin, tenuous analysis. Whitewater’s contemporary socio-economics depend on understanding the 2007-2009 Great Recession and its aftermath.
The pandemic exacerbated problems in communities that had already been struggling.
A story from Sarah Lehr reminds of how much needs to be done. She writes More Wisconsin high schoolers reporting anxiety, depression:
More Wisconsin high schoolers are reporting struggles with depression and anxiety, according to results from the state’s latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
Over a third of the students surveyed reported suffering depression in 2021. That’s the highest level since 1999, when the survey began asking teens if, during the last 12 months, they ever felt sad or helpless almost every day for at least two weeks in row to the point that they stopped doing usual activities.
And more than half, or 52 percent, of the respondents, said they struggled with significant anxiety in the past year, the largest percentage since that question was added in 2017.
More than 1,800 students at 43 Wisconsin public, charter and alternative schools completed the anonymous questionnaire during the fall of last year. Although the data, which is collected every two years by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, doesn’t point to a cause for mental health struggles, social worker and DPI consultant Monica Caldwell suggested the pandemic could have played a role.
“Essentially what we’ve had here is an interruption in the normal development of kids,” Caldwell said during a press event Tuesday. “So kids have some unmet needs, of course, and they’re catching up on what was lost. And what we have at the same time is we have adults that are tired and have experienced loss themselves. Our systems of care — including schools that are often the first and primary form of mental health support — we’re under resourced, and we’re tired.”
See also Disparities in Maternal and Infant Health Outcomes Plague Walworth and Rock Counties.
The way out cannot be the repetition of what these communities have done for years. There is, however, a way out for communities that set aside yesterday’s approaches. See What Ails, What Heals.
There’s much to consider here.
Germany: police arrest far-right extremists planning to ‘overthrow the state’: